


Into the Woods

by mute90



Category: Stargate SG-1, Supernatural
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-22
Updated: 2013-11-21
Packaged: 2018-01-02 07:47:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mute90/pseuds/mute90
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his son died, after his wife left him, and after he visited his first alien planet and lived to tell the tale, a retired Jack O'Neill just wants to fish and drink beer. Unfortunately for him, he's stuck in a vanishing forest with mythical creatures and the not-so-cute-and-fluffy Mary Winchester. She wants to get home to her sons. He just wants to get back to his retirement. To do that, the colonel and the hunter have to work together and get the hell out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fish, Beer, and odd Meetings

Jack O’Neill loved fishing.

Really.

There was the steady rhythm in the throw, the relaxing state of waiting for a tug, and – in his case – the almost complete impossibility that a fish would actually tug on the string. (Unless someone transported them just for the hell of it, there were no fish in the lake.) It was all pretty damn good, good enough that Jack was considering getting this little cabin just for himself rather than renting it only a few weekends a year. He was a retired man now. He needed hobbies and…stuff.

Point was: fishing was good. It was nice.

And if he remembered teaching Charlie how to throw a line, it was as sweet as it was bitter and God knew he deserved the latter more than anything else.

The only thing that could distract him from his fishing task was beer or, rather, the lack of it. Fishing was good but it was better with a cold beer and Jack’s ice chest was sadly empty, prompting a ride down the hill and to the store with the old man who gave a discount to any good military folks.

Fishing was good. Beer: that was his downfall. He just didn’t know it yet.

But he’d find out soon enough, on the way to the store in his truck with retired-fishing-beer on the mind and an empty road in front of him.

Cause, of course, his moment of almost-peace could not go on undisturbed. It had to be broken into – violently. The violent disturbance that typically came in the way of guns, bomb, or politicians was replaced by -.

'Dragon!'

It was the first word that popped into Jack’s mind for the creature that swooped out of the nearby forest, leathery wings beating against the wind and tail making a large gouge where it dragged across the floor. Dragon. Bat. Dragon. Lizard. Dragon. Alien. Dragon. Alien-Dragon.

Whatever the hell it was, it was in front of him. Its body was moving farther up and its head was tilted toward the sky. Its tail was too low though, still in Jack’s path, still right in front of his car, blocking his path and disturbing his beer-running peace. He tried to brake, tried to swerve. It was useless. The tail hit the front end of his car and sent it sliding across the asphalt and smashing into a tree on the other side of the road. His head slammed into the driver side window, his teeth rattled, and his vision swam.

“Ah crap,” Jack groaned, bringing one hand up to the side of his head. He scrunched up his eyes and gritted his teeth. “Crap!”

With that last shout, he scrambled for the door handle. His fingers found it and he pushed out of the car, stumbling to his feet and muttering under his breath, “Just wanted to fish, damn it!” He looked up toward the sky. There wasn’t a dragon. There wasn’t an alien. There wasn’t even a cloud up there conveniently shaped like one.

However, there was a destroyed car that proved that something had been there.

Jack turned his attention toward the patch of woods the flying car-totaler had come from. He couldn’t see anything – anything at all. It wasn’t just the knock to his noggin either. It looked like someone had shut all the lights off just beyond the first trees. Jack squinted. He still saw nothing and that…wasn’t normal, not when the sun was high and the rays easily should have illuminated something beyond those trees.

“God damn it.”

Jack pulled his gun out of from under his seat. He then moved around the front of the car, and approached the woods slowly, a familiar weird tingle that used to mean things weren’t making a lick of sense but had come to mean – in only few days – that there was an alien nearby.

There was something wrong with his retirement when he got that feeling.

He moved closer to the woods. As he got closer, his view got clearer, complete darkness slowly falling away to reveal a person lying face down on the floor. It was a woman with long blond hair tied back in a ponytail. As he watched, she lifted her head an inch off the floor, shook it once, and then turned to look behind her. That was when Jack saw it, a large black hairy…thing was coming towards her. It looked like a malformed monkey – a huge malformed monkey with too many teeth and hammer-like hands. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t human and, damn it, retirement meant he didn’t deal with – didn’t even _think_ about – anything that wasn’t human.

It was the unspoken role: don’t even think about it just in case someone picked it out of your brain.

The woman turned onto her back. The big…thing slapped a large (and very thick) branch out of its way. It ripped off from its tree and crashed to the ground. The woman was crawling backward. Big Monkey-looking thing was taking long strides. It would reach her within seconds.

Cursing again, Jack rushed forward, lifting his gun as he went.

However, the sound of his first shot echoed with the sound of her own as she pulled a gun from who-knows-where and fired three quick shots at the overgrown-monkey. The thing stumbled backward. She scrambled to her feet and took off running for the road. That’s when she saw him.

“Go back!” she yelled, already jumping over exposed roots and around trees that hadn’t looked that weird from the outside. Jack didn’t need that advice, not when Ugly Monkey was shaking off four bullets to the chest with too much ease. They ran. Only they shouldn’t have had to cause, last Jack had checked, the edge of the woods was just right behind him. It wasn’t any more though. Instead, it was running away from them as they were running toward it. That patch of woods just got bigger, the light from beyond the trees going farther and farther away until it was nothing but a pinprick.

The woman slowed to a stop. “Crap!”

Jack stopped with her. “What just happened?”

The thing was crashing through the trees toward them.

“Come on,” she snapped and ran to the side, pointedly not waiting for Jack to say a single word.

He ran after her. “Yeah, sure, don’t wait for me,” he muttered.

She was waiting though, slowing down every mile to look back, notice he was still there, and sigh in something like relief and annoyance all mixed up into one. He slowed down with her of course and she snapped, “Hurry!”

“Hurry where?!”

She didn’t answer, instead moving uphill and into a patch of trees, where she disappeared from view.

He followed her. He pushed through the branches, the edges scratching his arms and face as he went. On the other side was another hill, this one steeper. There was a hole at the top that led into a cave on the mountainside.

There was now a mountain in the big forest. Huh.

 “Get inside!” she said – ordered, really. He was getting a little sick of the ordering ‘cause – you know – retirement. The lack of orders was a bit of a perk.

Jack climbed up. He had to duck his head to enter without giving himself another pretty bump to match the last one. The inside was bigger though. A large camping lamp that sat on a rock in the corner revealed an area about the size of his living room. A few feet away from the lamp was a large backpack, one of those thousand-zippered things with a compartment for everything you’d need and a whole bunch of crap you wouldn’t.

The woman pulled the bag toward her and began to rummage through it.

Jack hovered near the entrance and, presumably, the only exit. “So,” he tried, “that was interesting.”

The woman didn’t look up from her bag. “That’s one word for it.”

“And the other would be…”

“That was a yeti.”

Jack stared at her and then nodded, slowly. “A yeti?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh.” He paused. “That makes sense in a crazy, we’ve-both-lost-our-minds way.”

And, of course, she still didn’t look up from her bag. “What would you call it?”

“A…big, ugly monkey.”

She finally looked up, stared at him with a disbelieving, how-could-you-be-so-stupid look he knew way too well.  “Okay. Why don’t you call it that then: a big, ugly monkey? I’ll stick to calling it a yeti. It’s shorter.

 “Good point.” He nodded his let’s-go-with-the-crazy nod. (Let no one ask where that one came from.) “So, there’s a yeti – in the woods. These very big woods with hidden caves and a big ugly, monkey.”

“How many bullets do you have left?” she said, which wasn’t any kind of answer.

“Eight,” he said. Ten, really, but the crazy women didn’t need to know that.

“Save ‘em for emergencies.”

“Yeah, I was kinda figuring that. How many of those things are in here?”

“Those? I’ve only seen one but that’s not the only thing in here.”

Jack narrowed his eyes. Apparently, beating around the bush was not going to help. This woman didn’t even seem to know there was a bush to beat around. “How about you tell me what the hell is going on?” was his flat and oh-so-polite way of doing it.

She finally gave up on looking for whatever she was looking for in her thousand-zippered pack. She pushed the backpack away in frustration. “I did.”

“A little more _information_ would be appreciated.”

“You don’t need any more information. I told you: You’re in the woods. That was a yeti. We’re stuck. We’re screwed. You’re not helping. Are you hearing me?”

“Loud and clear,” he answered sarcastically.

 “Great.” She looked up and down, up at the little gray hairs appearing at his head and down at the old, beaten fishing boots on his feet. “Who are you anyway?”

“Colonel Jack O’Neill.” He wasn’t sure what he expected to get from that. A little more respect would’ve been nice. A ‘this is the situation, colonel’ would’ve been nice. His hopes weren’t that high but it would’ve been nice.

Instead, her reaction was, “Ugh! Great.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Mary. Sorry, no titles for me.”

“A civilian. Ugh!” he mocked.

She stood up to face him. “Hate to break it to you, colonel, but you’re the civilian in here.”

“Is that right?”

She raised her head to stare him down. “Unless you know what that thing was you just shot?”

He scratched at the back of his head.

“That’s what I figured.”

“You got me. Good thing I’m not a man that claims he knows it all – on good days. So, how about you just _explain_ it to me.” She opened her mouth and he interrupted. “A little more than ‘there’s a yeti in the woods’.  Not so sure I don’t think you’re crazy about that one but it’s not like I need a history lesson. How do you kill the ‘yeti’? Better yet, what’s going on with this forest.”

Crazy Women didn’t feel like telling him. That much was obvious. He was wasting her God-given time and he wasn’t minding that one bit. Apparently getting it through her head, he wasn’t about to snap a salute at Mary, No Titles, she answered. “You’re in the vanishing forest.”

“I’m getting this odd feeling I should know what you’re talking about?”

She shrugged. “You wanted me to tell you. I told you. This thing moves.” She frowned. “I’m not in Arizona anymore, am I?”

“Uh…I wasn’t in Arizona.” He shook his head. More on that later. “The…big, flying…lizard?”

“Dragon,” she corrected, “but I bet even you knew that.

Huh. Where was Daniel Jackson when you needed him? Demons. Mythical creature. Vanishing forest. Difficult people. Geeks knew that kind of stuff or they would if they weren’t on Abydos playing house with a beautiful woman, probably preparing to pop out a mini-geek. Of course, there was a better a question: why the hell was Jack thinking about Daniel Jackson?  

“Are you hearing me, _Colonel_?”

Oh, yeah, there was something very weird going on and nobody to win it over with a chocolate bar. He wasn’t sure if the weird thing was the _yeti_ or the woman.

“That’s all…very interesting.”

She sighed again, an irritated, put-upon sigh that was supposed to make him feel like an itty-bitty, really annoying fly. Thankfully, for him, he knew that feeling well. He excelled at making people feel like there was an itty-bitty, really annoying fly named Jack in the room.

“I’m sure you’ve heard the stories. Someone goes into the wilderness to look for a lost treasure, lost city, lost dog… They’re never heard from again.”

“They got lost.”

“Sure, they got lost. They got lost in here.”

“What? You’re saying this is some kind of,” Jack threw his hands up in the air, “‘lost and found’. They’re all in here.”

“No, I’m saying they all _died_ in here. This place appears. It sticks around. In that length of time, people decide they have something they really need in here. They come in. They get attacked by a yeti or a werewolf or whatever else smells them out. They never get out. People might come looking for them but they don’t get out either. Before something like this can be put on a record, the forest vanishes.”

Jack decided to ignore the werewolf for a second. “…Vanishing forest.”

She nodded once. “Vanishing forest.”

“So, it just picks itself up and moves?”

Mary brought her hand up to the side of her head and rubbed.  Jack had just graduated from fly to a maker of migraines. “Some people think it’s a ghost forest. The animals, this whole place, used to be well-know. It used to be worshipped. They were sacrifices, tributes to their gods. Then, some people got sick of all the deaths, burnt the place down. However, it’s not that easy to destroy something like this. If anything, the burning just made it more powerful, allowed it to change locations.” She dropped her hand. Fly to Migraine-Maker to potential punching bag in under a minute. She was obviously stressed. “I thought you didn’t want the history.”

“Vanishing forest,” he repeated.

“Are you gonna keep saying that? The answers not going to change.” She took three long strides until she was right in his face. “This is a forest that vanishes. A yeti lives in here along with a crapload of other things.”

“And you’re in here because?”

“I’m here to make it vanish for good.  Things are just a little more complicated than I thought. I wanted to get supplies more supplies and I got stopped.” She glared back at her bag, the thousand-zippered thing that apparently didn’t have what she needed. “I’ll have to work with what I have.”

He raised a finger, flicking if back and forth between them. “We.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“ _We’ll_ have to work with what you have,” he corrected her oh-so-politely. “I want to get out of here too, you know? I have a life.”

“You have important _colonel_ things to do?”

“No, I have to go fishing.” She stared at him. He added, “And drink beer. I have fishing and beer and -.” And not much else, now that he thought about it. He very pointedly did not like thinking about it. “Point is, I want to get back to it.”

“Okay, then, listen -.”

“Now, I’m not saying I believe there’s a yeti running around the forest or that you’re not crazy – just to clear that up.” He then waved a hand for her to continue.

 She caught his wrist and, my, that was a strong grip. “Look, smartass, I don’t give a damn what you think of me. I want to get out of here. In order for me to do that, you need to listen and not get in my way. You also need to get off the skeptics train. Burying your head in the sand will only lead to people dying. If you’re lucky, it’ll only be you.”

He carefully removed his wrist from her clutches. “You sound like you speak from experience.”

With that, her darkened, that remembering dark rather than the pissed off dark she’d had just a moment before. “Trust me. I do.”

Now, Jack O’Neill wouldn’t call himself a difficult man…but many, many other people would. That didn’t mean he didn’t know when to let something go and play nice. “So, there’s some big, bad monster out in those woods.”

“A lot of them,” Mary responded.

“You know what to do about them?”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

So, either he had caught the crazy or he was seriously close to believing the woman who said he was in the magical damn forest. “Then, let’s go kill some big, bad monsters. What do you say?”

She gave him an appraising look. “You need a weapon.” She pulled her bag toward her, flipped it upside down to reveal yet another zipper at the very bottom. Out of there, she pulled a very sharp, very shiny knife. She tossed it to him. “Iron.”

 He spun it in his fingers, tested the weight with practiced hands. Mary looked reluctantly approving. “Iron; that matters?”

“What you use on these things always matter. Regular knives won’t do much. Sometimes, iron doesn’t even do it but it’s the best we’ve got.”

“Then, it works for me. I’m not really a picky kind of guy.”


	2. Embrace the Crazy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack likes to roll with the punches and embrace the crazy. With Mary Winchester, big ugly creatures that may or may not be aliens, and magical vanishing forests that make you vanish with the their amazing power of vanishing-ness, it really is for the best.

They scouted the woods around the cave. Jack knew scouting like he knew knives which gave him plenty of time to suss out the fact that so did his unexpected partner. “Not too far out,” Mary told him as she crept carefully around trees and over roots. “What we need is close by.”

“What would that be?”

“The center,” she muttered, putting up one hand to stop him. There was a scuttling sound that got closer and then farther away as the owner passed them by. Mary dropped her hand and continued, “Someone – a witch, maybe a gypsy – set up an altar in the forest to act as a magnetic tug for supernatural creatures. They came, they saw - .”

“They vanished?”

“Maybe. Nobody really knows why it vanishes. There are hints that it might’ve been stationary at some point. There are hints that it’s been moving forever. It doesn’t matter. People die in this place every year. It’s time it vanishes for good.”

“Why hasn’t anyone gotten rid of this place before?”

“They tried.”

“Oh. Let me guess,” she stopped and he took the opportunity to lean in for extra flair, “they vanished.”

He got a dry look for his flair. “You like that word.”

“It’s a nice word. So, people come in here and vanish and you think it’s a good idea to come in here and possibly vanish.”

“It needs to stop. That’s what I’m here for,” she repeated and wasn’t that just a big pile of nothing in the explanation department? She raised her hand again. He stopped and considered her. Blonde, pretty face, nice eyes, nice figure, nice gun strapped to her hip: three guesses what didn’t fit.

He took the first opportunity to talk again. “You came in here alone? That kind of strikes me as a bad idea.”

“Yeah, someone told me that. I didn’t listen.”

“Bet you’re regretting that now,” he pointed out, “what with you being stuck in here with a _civilian_.”

She ignored that but the tightening of her jaw suggested he was right. She made a bad call. “What about you, colonel?” Mary asked, taking it to the offensive. “Why did you come?”

“I thought I saw a sweet, helpless woman getting attacked by a big, ugly monkey.”

She smirked. “And now?”

“And now I’m stuck in the forest with a not-so-sweet woman and a big, ugly monkey.”

She shook her head. “Sometimes, you just wake up to days like this.”

“Only me.”

“Funny. I would’ve said that about me this morning.”

“How long have you been in here?”

“Going on a week now, far as I know.” She moved on.

Jack was sure he didn’t want to be stuck in there day more-or-less a week. She shrugged it right off though. Week and counting…

“Don’t you got something -?”

She stopped abruptly and up went her hand, this time so close that her flicked his nose on the way up. There was no acknowledgement of his – admittedly minor – discomfort. Instead, she used that same hand to wave him forward.

He moved carefully behind the nearest tree and she crowded behind him, gesturing again for him to take a look.

There was a guy in the woods. Jack was pretty sure this one was a guy. He had a helmet almost fused onto his head but there were two legs, two hands, and two feet. Then again, the aliens had two legs, two hands, and two feet.

You never knew these days.

“I’m betting you’ve never seen anything like that before,” Mary murmured in his ear.

“Not exactly like that. Uglier. Meaner. Bigger weapons.” She cocked and eyebrow at him and he admitted, “Okay, I may be lying about the uglier and meaner parts – maybe, but I’m telling the truth about weapons. That…thing – is stuck in the middle ages.”

“That makes sense. It’s not a modern warrior.”

“What?”

“It’s a warrior’s soul,” she said. He looked over his shoulder and caught her intense gaze. “Kind of like a ghost. Died a long time ago, probably in a war, cursed to wander in no-man’s land forever.”

“Ah.”

That’s could’ve been Jack. When he escaped in Iraq, he could’ve died. He didn’t think about it before – because warrior soul’s roaming the land wasn’t anything but a movie before – but he could’ve been another warrior’s soul. Cursed to never go home.

That would’ve been mighty depressing.

Then again, Charlie might have lived if he never came home, never brought his service revolver into the house and forget to lock it up. Sarah could’ve gotten remarried. Then again, that would probably already happen. It just cost them time and Charlie.

However, now there was Mary staring at him, making it clear that could be the two of them in the near future. There was no Charlie to save with his death. He’d come to terms with whole too-late deal.

“How do we get rid of it?” he asked.            

“Iron works a temporary charm,” Mary answered.

Jack nodded and moved quietly away from her. He could feel Mary’s eyes on him, judging him, seeing if he could help or if it was best to knock him out and leave him buried under a bunch of leaves ‘till she got back. He had this odd feeling she’d do that.

She wasn’t gonna have to though. Jack hadn’t been retired all that long.

He moved behind a tree a few feet away and to the left of the spirit, readying his borrowed knife. He then moved swiftly out into the open.

The spirit turned. It lifted its sword and charged at him. A foot away, Jack twisted sideways. He could hear the blade whistle past him and the crackling of leave as it hit the ground. He swung the knife in an arc, bringing it toward the neck. The knife went straight through, leaving the spirit nothing but a wisp of smoke in its wake. The smoke disappeared too.

And then there was a high screaming, growling thing coming up from behind him. He spun and saw a lizard or a pig or – he really was just gonna stop guessing. Whatever it was lunged at him.

Before it could touch him, a knife flew out from behind the trees and embedded itself in its back.

Following that came Mary. She gave him a brief nod before bending over and yanking the knife out of the dead creature. “Not bad, colonel.”

“I’m the best.”

“I didn’t say that.” She jerked her head to the side. “Let’s go. It’s temporary, remember?”

“So – uh – that thing?” he said as they passed.

“Chupacabra.”

“Ah.”

They creeped through the woods, him following quietly in her footsteps and her leading the way with light, quick steps. She had someone kind of training, he could see. He wasn’t sure what kind. It probably wasn’t anything official but you could tell this wasn’t her first run in…the forest.

Chasing down monsters.

He’d officially fulfilled his weird quotient for his entire life.

“I fought aliens, you know?” he said aloud. Not quite sure why but she was toting around a special weapons and telling him how to fight spirits. He had to give something.

“Yeah? What level did you get to?” She looked back at him.

“You think I’m talking about a video game.” She tossed him a look over her shoulder. Okay, so he played one of those games before. With Charlie. “Level 2. My kid could get all the way to the top, beat the thing with the five heads.”

“Let’s hope you’re that good.”

“I’m not nearly as good as my boy,” he muttered.

Up ahead of them, the trees stopped. The ground rose just beyond that. Mary and Jack bent down and climbed the few feet upward until they could peek over the edge.

The woods opened up to a perfectly circular clearing beneath them. Most of it was just grass. However, in the middle was a big rock surrounded by flower petals, green vines, and a thin moat of red stuff that actually seemed to move in a circular motion around the rock.

“In the movies where people do stuff like this, the red stuff is usually blood,” said Jack.

“Guess what?”

“What?”

“It’s probably blood,” Mary informed him.

“Of course.”

“Blood is powerful. Unless it’s specifically a protection spell, it’s pretty easily broken though. We just got to burn it all.”

“The rock, too?”

“That’s not a rock.”

Jack looked closer. On the side of the rock – still looked like a rock to him – there was righting in harsh, choppy letters. Blood. Rock with words on it. “It’s a gravestone?” He paused. “I’ve seen this in a movie, too. Human sacrifice. Do you have to move that rock? ‘Cause I should warn you my knees aren’t at their best.”

“We dig,” she said. “A circle in a circle. The bodies should be between the blood and the rock.”

Jack nodded. “Huh. So, we have to dig and watch out for all the things that are in here? In one big, open space.”

Mary moved onto her knees. “Easy, isn’t it?”

Jack moved with her. “Oh, yeah, let’s go take a walk in the park.”

 “You could always stay here.”

“That’s not happening.”

“Okay.”

His head snapped to the side. “Okay?” He didn’t expect it to be that easy.

“I need someone to distract the werewolf.”

“Ah, Christ.” Bait. He was bait. He _hated_ being bait. Bait usually ended up like fish bait in a body of water where there were actual fish. “Where?”

“It’s the thing that’s creeping around the other side.”

He looked to the other side of the clearing and, sure enough, there was a big skulking thing just waiting for them to make their move. “How about I do what you’re going to do and you distract the werewolf.”

“Come on. Be a man.”

“I’m getting the feeling you only say that when you want a man to do something he doesn’t want to do.”

She pulled her own knife, reached out and plucked his from his hand, and then replaced it. “Silver. I wouldn’t get into a hand to hand with it. Run. Hide. Use the gun if you have to but it’ll only stall it. If it all goes to shit, get back to the cave. I’ve got protection around it.”

“That was my plan.”

“Hurry,” she said, something that seemed to be her favorite word for him: hurry and run.

Just when he was starting to like her. (Scarily enough, he was pretty sure this meant she liked him well enough.)

Jack went back into the forest and then followed the circular edge until he was a good distance from Mary. Then, he ran out into the open, jumping and waving and shouting like a suicidal person otherwise known as distracting bait. The werewolf took off after him. It bounded off the woods with slick fur and glistening teeth and Jack spun and ran.

He bounded over roots and around trees as fast as his legs could carry him, staying better than the werewolf just by virtue of being smaller and more agile. It crashed behind him, smacking into trees and stomping on bushes with abandon. A good mile away, Jack fell into a hole and burrowed himself into the ground there. His  arms worked overtime and he tried hard not to swallow dirt.

The werewolf passed him by, not even bothering to sniff around in its rampage.

Jack came up for air. He brushed leaves out of his hair and dirt off his arms. That was damn good work if he did say so himself.

He headed back toward the clearing where the non-bait was, hopefully almost done.

Of course, Jack and, it seemed, Mary, could not be that lucky cause he didn’t return to a fully open and burning grave. Instead, he returned to a naked guy chasing Mary.

Jack stopped.

The naked man was twice the size of a normal man and there were eyes all over his body, even in places Jack thought they’d be slightly…uncomfortable in. He had a long sword in one hand and a short sword in the other and he was swinging both with such force that Jack could hear them whistling in the air from where he stood.

Mary was twisting her foot-long knife in her hand like she was going to – he didn’t know – cut a finger off maybe.

Jack abandoned his position and ran out like the good distracting bait he was.

“Hello! Over here!”

The eyes going down his back, over his butt, and straight down to the heels of his feet all focused on him.

Jack attacked him with his own foot-long knife, went right for the back of the head.

The thing swiped at him, preventing the blow and sending Jack flying until he collided into a tree and slid pathetically down the trunk. It then charged at him as things in the big bad woods liked to do.

Unlike the werewolf, he was focused, all eyes on Jack as he brought up both swords. He brought them both down, flying straight at Jack’s head in what would have been a killing blow if Mary hadn’t been chasing him down while he beared down on Jack.

She threw herself at one shoulder. The large man spun, sending both his weapons off their mark. However, it used the spin to its advantage, continuing its movements, the swords swinging lower but still with a tremendous amount of force. Mary’s eyes widened and she stumbled backward. It wasn’t fast enough to avoid the longer sword.

She cried out as it sliced into her leg. She fell backward onto the ground beside Jack.

Jack pulled out his gun and used three more of his emergency bullets to send the thing backward, taking out eyes and just something big, bad, and ugly.

Before the Many-Eyed Man could recover from the shock, Jack scooped Mary up and ran.

Behind him the thing let out a surprisingly high-pitched screech that became a crack of thunder in the air. “Hurry,” she said – again but, as usual, he couldn’t argue with her. Rain followed quickly, torrents of water that made the ground beneath his feet slippery and his way unclear.

“God damn it!”

They got to the edge of the hill and Mary pushed away from him. “Down!”

They couldn’t climb up the slippery slope with him holding her. He let her push away from him and stand on an unsteady leg. They then climbed, him keeping one hand on her upper arm to steady as he clawed at the mud to get up and into the cave.

“You said its safe here.” He pulled off his jacket, made a ball of it, and dropped into onto the floor.

She limped over to the corner with her bag and then dropped heavily to her butt. “As safe as it can get.” She reached for the bag but Jack grabbed it first.

“What do you need?” he asked.

She paused, hand still out and reaching for her supplies. Jack kept them out of her reach. After a few more moments, she dropped her hand. “Open the second zipper back,” she said. He followed her directions and found a first aid kit and two bottles of whiskey. Everything an injured woman needed. “Cheers,” she said. She lay back on his jacket. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Colonel.”

Mary stored two large bottles of alcohol in her bag. It was passed back and forth between them as he used it to sterilize the gash on her leg and she drank liberal amounts to dull the pain as he stitched her up.

“I told you not to get me killed,” she said when she was finally done bleeding.

“My distracting plan went a little bad.”

“It went really bad. Don’t do it again.”

“If I didn’t do it, you’d probably be chopped up more than this.”

“Mmm...” She closed her eyes, in that mildly pleasant tipsy state.

Jack sat back, pulled the bag toward him and started pulling open zippers randomly. There were knives, a tiny box with color-coded compartments that held a few bullets, and little bags of incense in one zippered area. He opened up one of the bags, sniffed, and jerked back in disgust.

He moved onto the next zipper. That one only held one thing: a fine, worn leather notebook, black with a symbol cut into the front cover.

Jack pulled it out.

He flicked through the book. There were monsters on every page, newspaper clippings stuffed in the pages, notes scribbled across the edges. The locations weren’t just ‘vanishing forest’. There was a hospital in Texas, a hotel in Vegas, and a nursing home in Kansas among way too many others.

“That’s our life.” Jack looked up to find Mary watching him, her head still pillowed on his jacket. “Hunters.”

“Hunters?”

“Figure I can count on you not breakdown and cry at the truth. Those things aren’t just in here. The scary things you hear about when you’re a little kid, the ones your parents probably told you weren’t real? Monsters under your bed? Scratching at your door? It’s all true. It all happens.”

Jack looked down at the book, at how thick it was even with the incredibly small handwriting. “I feel like I should be making a dun, dun, dun sound.”

“I feel like I should smack you,” she said, seriously.

There was howling outside, long low howls that made the hair on Jack’s arms stand up. “Let me guess: other werewolves.” She nodded. Jack shut the book and placed back in its zipper. Not the problem right now. “Are we going to be dodging them in the morning?”

“We can’t take a pack with what we have,” she said.  “Lucky for us, the packs only come out at night.”

“That other one...”

“- was out during the day and night on the full moon. The timing rules of the outside don’t apply in a place that can go anywhere. Time differences and all that.”

“Great. Tell me something; how did you stay alive this long with crazy werewolves, overgrown monkeys, and a man with a crap load of eyes? Super powers?”

She snorted. “That would make things easier. No, I just have two men waiting for me at home,” she explained. “I’ve got to get back.”

“Two?” Jack asked.

She looked at him, her eyes a little glazed. “That’s right.” She got a ridiculously smitten look on her face, began to tease him with…he guessed it was her sex life which, granted, sounded better than his. Then again, the sex life for a nun probably sounded better than his these days. “They’re handsome, smart, and crazy about me.”

“Well…that’s good.”

She laughed before taking another swig of her alcohol. She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.

He froze. “You’re not really a two-man woman, are you?”

“They’re ten and fourteen, Jack,” she said.

“They’re…” Jack began to work it all out.

Mary nodded. “They’re my kids, my little men.”

“Oh. Not quite like big men, then?”

She fell back and laughed. “They are if you ask them.”

“What about they’re dad? Is there a third man you didn’t mention?”

Mary’s eyes narrowed. “I kiss you and you start playing twenty questions?” When he didn’t relent, she looked away. “Their dad’s dead.” She pulled at the chain around her neck until a ring came into view, a wedding ring that lay over her heart.

She rubbed the ring between her thumb and forefinger. “What about you, Jack? Why are we fighting so hard to get out of here? Fishing and beer?”

He opened his mouth, wanted say ‘retirement’, maybe ‘fish’, maybe ‘beer’. It all sucked, wasn’t worth a damn thing when he compared it to what he used to have: his wife, his son, barbecues in the backyard and career day with Charlie begging him to wear his uniform because it would mark him as the coolest person ever.

Jack bent down and caught her lips with his own but she stopped him with a hand on his lips. “You just brought up my dead husband, Jack. I don’t feel like kissing another man right now.”

“My wife just left me and I don’t feel like kissing another woman right now.”

“What happened?”

The words slipped out of Jack’s mouth easily. “Our kid died. He accidentally shot himself with my service revolver.” It got easier to say it every time. Too bad that was the only thing that got easier.

Mary’s eyes widened. He knew what she was thinking, knew what every parent had to feel when hearing that: horror. _What if it were my kid?_ “I’m sorry.”

“So am I. I’m sorry every damn day. I can’t tell you why I want to live because I don’t know. Maybe it’s for my kid. Maybe it’s to prove something. Hell, maybe I’m just a stubborn ass who can’t take losing.”

“Think it’s that last one.”

“Probably.”

She removed her hand and he kissed her, softly. It was one soft bedtime kiss that ended with Jack pulling backwards and Mary turning her head to the side.

“You should get some rest.”

“Yes, sir.”

He pointed a finger. “Oooh. You should try that more often.”

“That’ll only happen in your dreams, Jack.”


	3. A Plan Is a Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A plan was a plan was a plan was a plan. Jack wasn’t the best at them. Though he’d never say it to Mary, he didn’t think she was much of one either. Oh, well, whatever worked.

A plan was a plan was a plan was a plan. Jack wasn’t the best at them. Though he’d never say it to Mary, he didn’t think she was much of one either.

Still, you put two half-good planners together and you could get a great one.

That’s what they got too. A great plan, if Jack did say so himself and he did say so, something that got him an amused smile from Mary before they set off for round two of get-the-hell-out-of-Freaky-Forest mission.

“Kill-Argus mission,” a vengeful Mary had corrected, which worked too.

At the middle of the clearing, Argus was waiting for them, He knelt by the altar, his many eyes open and watching his surroundings. The guy didn’t even blink. However, his head snapped up when the fire started. It began at opposite ends of the clearing and then quickly began to surround it. The goal was to get Argus in the circle – and keep everything else out.

Not them, though.

Mary and Jack stepped out of the trees before the fire could block them out. Jack stood with his big stick – skinny log, really, with his button-up shirt tied around the edge. Mary stood with her little knives.

Argus got to his feet, his one big sword and other smaller one clutched in both hands His head stood about a foot over Jack’s.

Oh, yeah, this was smart - not.

Argus waited for them, blocking the altar.

“I hate to break it to you but this is a little bit crazy,” Jack muttered.

“This was partly your plan, Jack,” Mary responded.

“No, the fire was my plan. You know, throwing it. This whole ‘lock ourselves in with a Naked Eye Guy’ was yours.”

“You remember the next part or do you want me to do it?”

“I remember it.”

Keeping the stick held firmly in one hand, Jack reached behind his back and came back with his gun. He lifted it up and shot Argus once in the chest. Argus stumbled back, shocked again. Bullets took some getting used to for mythical creatures, it seemed. He put the side of a hand to the hole in one of his eyes and felt the blood.

Jack swiftly put the gun back and charged. He got in one good hit while Argus was still shocked.

Mary ran toward the altar, sliding right in front of it like it was baseball and she was making a homerun.

He really hoped she was.

‘Cause Jack got in only one good hit.

Jack swung again and a big hand took a hold of the edge and used it to lift Jack from the ground and toss him into another part of the ground in a way that left his body aching, would leave it one big bruise if he got out of it alive.

Argus took four long steps and kicked him.

“Aargh!”

Him coming out alive: not the best odds there.

The good plan feeling was dropping out of him as he swiftly got every body part handed to him with interest.

Jack – already having had the crap beat out of him – was of no more interest to Argus. Instead, his attention was grabbed by the woman throwing lighter fluid across the altar in wide sweeps. His eyes – all of them – widened and he charged forward.

Mary got to her feet and readied herself, legs separated slightly. One knife lay abandoned on the floor to make room for the lighter fluid. She threw it upward in an arc and what was left of the lighter fluid covered Argus.

She then dove out of the way.

Jack pushed himself up onto all fours. He still had his stick. He pulled out the lighter and lit up the end of it. He threw the lighter toward the altar. Mary rolled out of the way of the sword flying toward her and it came crashing to the ground a few inches away. She lifted her legs and kicked him in the knee and then came up far enough to stick a knife into his leg.

She was bitter.

Jack got to his feet with his flaming stick. “Hey!”

Eyes focused on him again.

Jack ran forward.

Argus turned.

Mary took her chance and shoved an iron knife into his side over and over and over again. He cried out in pain, a long, loud roar erupting from his lips and catching the attention of everything else.

The forest screamed, roared, chirped, and screeched back.

He turned. The knife ripped right out of him. Mary lifted up her arms to block her head as he swiped at her, sending her straight to the ground.

Jack took his chance. There was a tag-team thing going on they couldn’t screw up now. He hit Argus in the back with his flaming stick/log/torch-y thing. Argus stumbled forward, the eyes Jack hit burning out and the others having trouble with the fire dancing in front of them.

He hit again, taking to the side of head and then his shoulder and then his head and then whatever body part he could hit.

Mary was at the altar, hopefully with the lighter ‘cause this was -.

Argus caught the stick in one hand. He closed it right over the flames. A low, pained growl erupted from his mouth but he didn’t let go. He pulled it right out of Jack’s grip. Jack tried to hold on but just got pulled right along with it and landed face-first on the ground in front of Argus.

\- not gonna work for long.

Jack rolled. The sword came down. Jack grabbed the wrist of the big guy holding the sword but he just got pulled up right along with it. The smaller knife entered his shoulder, sliding through flesh easily. Jack cursed.

This was how you lost a fight to a naked guy.

“Aargh! God damn it! Feel free to light it up.”

He wasn’t sure what Mary was doing now other than not answering.

Argus yanked the knife from his shoulder

That was when Mary appeared. She jumped onto Argus’ back, one arm encircling his neck and the other hand coming up to slit his throat.

Oh, this kind of woman.

Argus dropped him. There was something burning out of the corner of his eye: the altar.

Everything was also flickering: the trees, the animals that were raging outside the circle of fire, and even the ground beneath Jack. It was all coming in and out of focus rapidly and he was pretty sure it wasn’t just his head playing tricks on him.

Everything was slowly fading from existence except for their big friend Argus.

He was still alive, somehow, wrestling with Mary on the floor, one hand reaching out for the burning altar desperately.

“Jack!”

Jack crawled over to help Mary hold him down. He then pulled out his gun, placed it to Argus’ temple, and pulled the trigger.

He took a few seconds before looking up at Mary. She looked back steadily, her breath coming out hard and fast and blood trailing down one side of her face where Argus had smacked her to the ground.

And the altar burned.

And everything flickered.

And there was a tree up Jack’s ass.

No, really, there was a tree that kept appearing and reappearing, not solid just yet but it was reappearing in a place he really didn’t want it to appear for good.

“Uh…”

“Move!”

When was she going to learn that he didn’t need that advice? They both moved quickly directly toward the altar, staying as close as they could with the flames still burning.

Everything continued to flicker, staying longer as the fire ate at the ground they crowded around. Then, it stayed. Trees filled up the former clearing. They weren’t the hulking, vein-filled ones of before. Leaves and uneven grass appeared beneath their feet. A sliver of light could be seen between the branches above them. Argus’ body was half in and half out of a yellowed bush.

They were left standing in a burning forest.

“Ah, crap.”

They hadn’t counted on that.

The got up and moved around trees until they got to their perfect circle, which was still happily burning. They stopped between two trees and began to furiously kick dirt onto the bottom edge of the fire.

There was a fine line of black dust there.

(“It’ll burn straight around,” Mary said.

“How?”

“Magic. Break the dust line, it goes off.”)

It did too. Their fine line surrounding the clearing extinguished itself the instant they successfully broke the circle. Unfortunately, that didn’t help the fires they didn’t mean to start, the ones that had jumped from the circle to the trees as they had filled up the clearing or the one at the altar that was happily burning away the ground.

Jack grabbed Mary’s arm and borrowed her charmless word: “Move!”

They ran through the opening they created. They moved as straight as they could, unsure of the exit but moving quickly away from the fire. The woods weren’t that big this time around. Jack saw the out first and picked up speed. The edge of the woods was thankfully not moving away from them this time. They got closer and closer until they were bursting from the trees and onto the road. Mary crashed to her knees on the asphalt, her leg finally having had enough.

Jack could appreciate that feeling.

A car braked hard. It stopped a few feet away from them.

Jack walked forward and leaned heavily on the hood, the blood loss from the wound on his shoulder making him want to crash down right next to Mary.

“Howdy,” he said.

In the front seat, two older men – one with a jaunty straw hat – stared out at him.

“I don’t suppose you could give us a hand?” With that, his body decided to do some collapsing itself and he bent until his forehead was on the roof of the car.

He could hear the car doors opening and then quick footsteps. One came up beside him and grabbed his shoulder. “Hey, come on, now.”

The other passed him, presumably to head toward Mary.

The man beside Jack helped him straighten up. Jack used the opportunity to study that place that certainly wasn’t where he had crashed the day before. The forest had vanished, moved with them in it and now they were somewhere that was nowhere near his cabin.

“The forest is on fire,” Jack informed the man.

Good riddance.


	4. Always the Beer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They were out and everything was okay. Then...Jack wanted a beer.

Hospitals sucked. Doctor’s sucked. Needles and questions really sucked. However, the medication was always almost worth it. Almost. Usually. However, they weren’t in the usual situation and the kind of answers they had didn’t make it one of those times it was almost worth it.

Daisy Bach, Mary said her name was. Jack was her brother. _‘Please give us some medicine. We’ll sit down right here and wait for the cops to come and ask their questions ‘cause we’re just good citizens, we are.’_ Butter wouldn’t melt in ‘Daisy’s’ mouth even as they walked right past the entering policemen and out of the hospital.

“I feel like I should be worried about leaving anywhere with you. Your kind of criminal,” Jack said.

Mary rolled her eyes. “I gotta get home,” she replied. “Besides, what were you going to tell them? We only burned down the forest so it would stop vanishing?”

“I could’ve thought of something better.”

“Go ahead and try.”

Jack did too, all the way to Arizona, even as he was popping pills and trying not to send them straight into a ditch. “It was a bear,” he tried.

“That’s not a bite on your shoulder.”

He changed his story. “It was an accident.”

“You can’t just say ‘oops’ to burning down a forest, Jack,” Mary reminded him.

“…We have amnesia.”

Mary snorted. “All-purpose but always just a little unbelievable.”

“I’ll think of something.”

“No, you won’t.”

In Arizona, there was a car: 67 Impala, good condition. “Sweet,” he said.

“You sound like my kid,” Mary replied.

“Well, your kid has good taste in cars. Now, where are we taking this sweet thing? Are you staying in town?”

And that’s where the game stopped. Sweet, butter-couldn’t-melt Daisy was a world away from the woman assessing him over the hood of her car. Jack was a world away from thinking about stupid alibi’s that didn’t have a chance in hell of working. “You were just gonna drop me off here, weren’t you? Maybe drive out of town, travel in circles to make sure I’m not following you?”

“I was thinking about it,” she admitted. “There are quite a few people I’d trust to watch my back but wouldn’t trust within an inch of my kids _because_ they’re so good at watching my back.”

Jack could get that too. ‘Dangerous’ was a good thing to be on the field but, at home…

“Get in the car,” Mary finally said.

Jack raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t live far from here,” she told him.

She wasn’t lying about that, didn’t try to kick him out of the car at the edge of town and run him over or anything. Her house was about fifteen minutes away, an old thing with a big, dusty yard and a long driveway. All the lights in the house were off.

“You think they’re asleep,” Jack asked, imagining his own kid would be, this time of night.

“I think they’ll pretend to be.”

Then again, Charlie would be more likely to be doing that. “Ah.”

Mary parked. “You’re staying the night ‘cause you’re not taking my car. I’ll get you where ever you want to go tomorrow.” she said. “Just wait out here for a second though.”

“You’re gonna leave me out here in the dark?” Jack asked, eyes widening for effect.

Mary shook her head sternly but there was real amusement in her eyes. “Mommy’s not going to disappear for two weeks and walk back in with a strange man.”

Jack paused. “That would be awkward.”

“You have no idea.”

She exited the car and moved into the house. Jack leaned his head back against the seat and waited.

A few minutes later, she came back out, leaning heavily on her one good leg. “Come on in. They’re out now.”

He went inside.

Her house was clean. Very clean, especially for a place with two kids. It was…sparse.

It was a tiny thing with a living room that stored one small couch and a television set. The kitchen was a bit bigger, big enough to fit a table and two seats in one corner. There were three rooms beyond one wall. One – the one to the far back of the house – had a crooked AC/DC poster on it, the edges full of tape, both old and new. He could guess that was the kids’ room. A bathroom was in next to it. The bathroom was missing a door of its own. Beside the bathroom and closest to the entrance was another bedroom.

Mary led him in there and shut the door behind them.

The room was like the living room and kitchen: clean, sparse. There was a bed and chest of drawers next to it. However, that was it. Dusty blinds were on the window. The part of the closet he could see had only one jacket hanging there.

It was very unlived in.

“Home, huh?”

She looked around. “For now. I go where the job takes me.”

“The job vanishes, you vanish.”

“That’s how it works.”

“You keep saying that. That’s what you do. That’s how it works. How does it work now?”

She stopped to consider that. “Now, you help me clean up. My leg hurts.” She sat on the edge of the beds. “Then, we get some…sleep. We figure out everything else in the morning. Like that dragon -.

“The -.”

She shook her head and he cut himself off. Figure everything else out in the morning. Only way not to go crazy. He knew that. It didn’t all change just because the problem was a dragon this time.

He looked around. She pointed toward her drawer. “There’s another first aid kit in there. If that doesn’t work, we have one in the room.”

“If that doesn’t work?” he joked.

She was serious. “We have another one in the car.”

“That’s some serious medical supplies.”

“This is some serious work.” She sat gingerly on the bed. “You gonna help me with this or not?”

Jack frowned, trying to figure out what this was, what it meant ‘cause, as before, Mary wasn’t gonna offer explanations without a fight. “I’m getting this odd feeling you don’t like me anymore.”

“If I didn’t like you, you wouldn’t be in my house,” she said. She ran a hand through her hair. “Jack… I like you, okay? But my leg hurts and my boys were scared and I’ve been sleeping on a rock-hard floor for a week. It’s the end of my rope.”

“I got some rope to spare.”

“Then, hand it over.” She moved carefully back until she could lay her head on the pillows.

Jack stared at her, at the hair she’d let out of the ponytail so that it lay over her shoulders, at the hip that was lacking a gun. It was different. Somehow, it was a little scarier.

Jack pushed that thought away and got to work. He unbuttoned her jeans and slid them down her thighs and off her legs. He then grabbed the gauze and peroxide. She hissed as he cleaned her off, calmed as he ran one of his calloused thumbs over her knee.

He was a medic for now. He reminded himself of that, tried to think of blood and cuts and infections instead of how smooth her skin felt and how it stood against the dark brown of the blanket she lay on.

He wrapped her leg up in gauze. He put the supplies away, threw the old bandage in a trash bag hanging from a nail on the wall and then just stood there, standing in her room with her in a shirt and underwear on the bed.

He cleared his throat. “So,” he said, “I’ll just grab a blanket.” He looked around the room. He shuffled his feet. He waited for a blanket to fall out of the sky or Mary to take pity on him and just tell him what he was supposed to do. “Or a sheet. I’m good with a sheet too.”

“You can stay here,” she said. Lifeline thrown.

“Oh.” Jack nodded. “I swear I don’t snore. Not much.”

“That’s okay. I don’t really feel like going to sleep right now.”

“I thought you were at the end of your rope.”

“I thought you were going to lend me some of yours.”

His eyes flicked toward the wall that separated them from her kids. “What about -?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you think too much?” Mary asked.

“I can honestly say I’ve never been accused of that. Many, many other things…”

 “Jack, shut up.” She reached out for him. He stepped closer and she grabbed his sleeve and pulled him down toward her. He was careful with her leg, got on the bed with as much ease as he could manage with her mouth already on his and her hands already tugging up his shirt.

“So… No blanket or sheet or couch.”

“No, no blanket or sheet or couch.”

He settled over her. “…I never really liked the couch.”

XXX

Beer; beer was always his downfall, it seemed.

That’s what he went looking for the next morning, every bone in his body aching from little forest fun the day before. The way Mary was drinking that stuff, he figured she had to have something good.

He heard the shotgun cock behind him when he was bent over looking in the fridge.

He stood straight because, otherwise, that would be an embarrassing way to die.

He raised his hands upward. He turned slowly and was met by a fourteen year old kid in boxer shorts and a white t-shirt. He had light-brown bed hair and a disturbingly steady hold on his shotgun.

He said the first thing that came to mind, “Guns are dangerous.”

The kid snorted.

“He knows that,” said another voice and, from behind the older kid came a younger one; the ten-year-old. That one was in an oversized Scooby-Doo shirt and sweats. He notably did not have a shotgun.

“I’m a friend of your mom’s,” Jack tried.

The younger one gave him a highly sympathetic look. “Yeah, he knows that too.”

“Dean Winchester!”

Thank Mary.

Mary – their mother – stopped at the doorway to the kitchen. “Put it down,” she ordered. “Now.”

Dean reluctantly lowered it. “You didn’t say you brought someone home,” Dean said, accusingly.

“I don’t report to you, Dean.”

The younger one jumped in, his face perfectly earnest as he lied. “But Dean thought it was a stranger, mom!”

Mary shook her head, disbelievingly. She took the shotgun from Dean and placed it on the table. She then turned both boys around to face him, one hand on each of their shoulders. “Jack, this is Sam and Dean.”

Sam waved one hand. “Hi!”

Dean glared until Mary squeezed his shoulder in warning. He let loose a sarcastic, “Yeah, great to meet you!”


End file.
